Monster eyes...are watching you! Watching your every mooooove...

It's Halloween!  Since I'm being lazy and staying in pajamas until after lunch, I thought I'd go ahead and do a quick blog post in case anyone needs a last-minute Halloween dessert for a party later.  I'll start with the monster eyeball cake I made for Todd's work this week.  The inspiration came from Haniela's web site, and I got the recipe from Baking Bites - although an vanilla loaf cake/pound cake recipe will do.  The original web site isn't clear, but you'll need to make about 2 1/2 loaf cakes!  I learned this the hard way at the last minute.

First:  mix up one loaf cake recipe.  You'll be separating it into thirds, but definitely make one a lot bigger and one fairly small.  Color one side green (this will be the monster iris), the smallest side black (for the pupil), and toss some colored jimmies into the white batter.  Spread it onto a VERY WELL-SPRAYED COOKIE SHEET (I learned this the hard way too) and bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Use large, smaller, and smallest cookie cutters to cut out the parts.  I used a football shape for the white of the eye and the cap to my vanilla for the pupil.  Piece them together...

...and freeze for 4 hours.  I just couldn't find the right size for the iris, and I didn't have time to linger over this irritating detail, so I just made do.

Meanwhile, mix up your other 1 1/2 loaf recipe and color it purple.  After your eyeballs are frozen, line them up like little soldiers in the bottom of the loaf pan and pour the purple batter around them.  See, I didn't bother to make the other 1/2 recipe and I didn't have enough batter to really cover the eyeballs.  What is shown = one loaf recipe.

You get a nice rise during baking...but for me, not nice enough.

Oh, well, frosting covers a multitude of sins.

I used the grass/hair tip to make monster hair, but I couldn't seem to make it work on the sides of the loaf.  I think my icing was too stiff.  Again, short on time, so I just gave it a flat finish.

At least the top looked cool.

I used some royal icing eyes I had stashed.  Todd took it to work and got rave reviews!  Even though my eyeballs were unbalanced because I didn't have the right size cookie cutters, and even though I was too impatient to add another 1/2 loaf's worth of batter, you could still see that you had a MONSTER EYEBALL looking up from each cake slice!

For my "official" Halloween treat this year, I decided to make cookies - a spider on its web.  I had cookie cutters for both.  The spider web is easy.  Bake the cookie, outline with a thicker royal frosting, and fill it in with a thinner version.  While still wet, spiral-swirl black frosting in the center...

Take a toothpick and, starting from the center, drag out to each point.

Voila!

Outline your spiders with thicker frosting...

...fill them in with the thinner version, and pop some royal icing eyes in.

Squiggly mouth comes after everything dries.  The final result?  Love.  

At our house today, we've got our decorations up.  Creepy glitter ravens...

Hands poking out of every drawer and cabinet...

...and lots of "miscellaneous."

Games (and some work, sigh) today, and a scary movie marathon tonight!  Even though I'm not eating sugar, we are going to load up on some guilty-pleasure carbs.  Haunted bagels, anyone?

Happy Halloween!!!